Mark the ease, the play, the curiosa felicitas, of this exquisite little poem. Could it have been as happy in any other measure?
The stern and unflinching patriot, Andrew Marvell, evidently takes delight in the piquant grace of the octo-syllabic. Here is a passage from his poem addressed to the Lord Fairfax, descriptive of the grounds about that nobleman's house, in Yorkshire, called Nun-Appleton. Speaking of the meadows, Marvell says:—
"No scene, that turns with engines strange, Does oftener than these meadows change; For when the sun the grass hath vex'd, The tawny mowers enter next; Who seem like Israelites to be, Walking on foot through a green sea. To them the grassy deeps divide, And crowd a lane to either side. With whistling scythe, and elbow strong, These massacre the grass along.
The mower now commands the field; In whose new traverse seemeth wrought A camp of battle newly fought; Where, as the meads with hay, the plain Lies quilted o'er with bodies slain: The women that with forks it fling, Do represent the pillaging. And now the careless victors play, Dancing the triumphs of the hay. When, after this, 'tis piled in cocks, Like a calm sea it shews the rocks."
The poems of Thomas Randolph, a writer of the seventeenth century, are not so well known as they deserve to be. A specimen, therefore, of his treatment of our favourite verse, will be some such a novelty as is afforded by the revival of an obsolete fashion. He is addressing his mistress while walking through a grove:—
"See Zephyrus through the leaves doth stray, And has free liberty to play, And braid thy locks. And shall I find Less favour than a saucy wind? Now let me sit and fix my eyes On thee that art my paradise. Thou art my all: the spring remains In the fair violets of thy veins; And that it is a summer's day, Ripe cherries in thy lips display; And when for autumn I would seek, 'Tis in the apples of thy cheek; But that which only moves my smart, Is to see winter in thy heart."
Of Butler it is needless to speak; everybody knows Hudibras. He is, indeed, a glorious champion of the octo-syllabic verse. The glories, too, of Prior,—the witty, the humorous, the riant Prior,—are too well known to require illustration. We say "too well known," for Matthew, alas! had a sovereign contempt for les bienséances, and only, now-a-days, finds his "way into families" because time and a classic reputation have, in a manner, sanctified his extravagancies. But what must have been the irresistible charm of his octo-syllabic measure, to have seduced the morbid methodist, Cowper, into a warm eulogy of the very metre in which his licentious freaks were perpetuated?
As in Prior's case, Gay chose this particular verse to sin in. We do not allude to his "Fables," but to his "Tales," which are dexterous and pleasant enough, but wrong. The reader must not expect specimens. From the next writer, however, to whom we shall allude, namely, Green, author of "The Spleen," we shall be happy to transfer to our pages an extract. Green was a member of the Society of Friends; but, whatever might have been the formality of the outward man, never did a more genial heart beat in the bosom of a human creature than in that of Quaker Green. He was a philosopher, a humanist, a wit, a poet; and we do not like him the less because he took especial delight in the sly humour of the eight-syllable rhyme. He found in this measure a pleasant compromise between a staid cheerfulness and a roystering joke, and he dandled it to his heart's content in the true spirit of Quaker love-making; that is to say, with a certain significance of purpose qualified by sobriety of pretence. The friendly triumph of the flesh over the spirit was never more cordially manifested; but all is done "with conscience and tender heart." The poem called "The Spleen" would have been a luxury from any writer. From Green, in his drab coat, it has a double relish. The fire that burned under the broad-brimmed hat of this wise and gentle lover of humanity, was too strong for the stuff of which his physical man was composed; it
"O'er informed his tenement of clay;"